The prime accused behind the murder of former minister and NCP leader Baba Siddique, Shiv Kumar Gautam, has informed that he had hung around outside Lilavati Hospital for some time after firing at the leader to find out whether his victim had survived the attack. According to police, Gautam changed his shirt within minutes of the incident and then spent close to half an hour in the crowd before leaving after being informed that Siddique’s condition was critical.
66-year-old Siddique was shot in Bandra, Mumbai, on October 12 at about 9:11 PM. He received two bullets on the chest and was taken to Lilavati Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries later.
Gautam was supposed to meet his associates Dharmaraj Kashyap and Gurmail Singh at Ujjain railway station. They were to be taken to Vaishno Devi by a member of the Bishnoi gang. But the plan collapsed when Kashyap and Singh were picked up by police.
The probe into the Siddique murder led to Gautam’s arrest on Sunday, with the suspicious actions of his four friends serving as a lead for the police to zero in on him. The four had made several calls in the middle of the night and other suspicious actions like buying clothes in different sizes and planning to meet Gautam in a desolate forest raised the Mumbai police’s suspicion.
Gautam, along with accomplices Anurag Kashyap, Gyan Prakash Tripathi, Akash Srivastava, and Akhilendra Pratap Singh, was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch with the help of the Uttar Pradesh Police Special Task Force near the Nepal border.
After shooting, Gautam ran to Kurla and boarded a local train to Thane and left for Pune, where he reportedly threw away his mobile phone. He is said to have stayed in Pune for about seven days before shifting to Jhansi and Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh.
Later, Gautam was found hiding in a cluster of small hutments, about 10 kilometres from Nanpara town in Uttar Pradesh.
